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Toshiba p20 Blank screen

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  • Battery
  • Toshiba
Last response: in General UK & Ireland Discussions
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August 22, 2011 1:17:33 AM

I have a Toshiba P20 laptop that is dead. I get 3LED's on, fans that work, but that's it. No hard drive noise nothing on the screen. I have tried to boot without the battery without the CD drive, I have taken out both memory chips ..still the same I don't get any beeps no sound at all other than the fans. I have stripped the laptop down to the MB looking for a cmos battery
no battery, I have looked for a jumper Cl1..not there...please can someone just help me with something that works I have been trying all kinds of things for a week now..still nothing...I know it's not doing the POST but don't know why or how to fix the problem...please help

denver372

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August 22, 2011 7:06:56 AM




Hello and welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums.

Have you tried a bootable CD with the hard disk disconnected? There may still be life left in it yet. No beeps is a good sign but it's just possible the hard disk has failed and is preventing the machine from working. It sounds impossible but I'v eknown it to happen.

August 26, 2011 1:03:11 AM

Saga Lout said:


Hello and welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums.

Have you tried a bootable CD with the hard disk disconnected? There may still be life left in it yet. No beeps is a good sign but it's just possible the hard disk has failed and is preventing the machine from working. It sounds impossible but I'v eknown it to happen.


Hi and thanks for the welcome.

I have tried to boot from a CD but not with the hard drive disconnected !.. I will give it a try but I'm not to sure it will work.
When I try to boot from the hard drive as normal I do get a flicker of light from the CD drive the fans come on and I get a very quick and faint flicker on screen, then nothing no other sounds nothing on screen.

I have now connected my laptop hard drive via a caddie to my PC..everything was still there (it had XP on it)..Thinking it was a problem with the hard drive I reformatted the laptop hard drive (NTFS) I have also checked it for faults and it was fine no reported faults at all..so now the hard drive is empty. I cannot get into the bios at all. I have been looking on the web for ways to install a OS on the laptop hard drive while it's connected to me PC then try to boot as normal from the hard drive..don't know if this would work though ? I'm not sure if power is getting to the hard drive or if it's getting to the MB at all. The lights I do get when I try to boot normal are...My power button has a Blue ring light around it..I get three lights on the front edge..Green light for the AC adapter...Blue power light...Green battery light (this was orange until the battery was charged then Green)..and I get a orange flicker on the CD draw....the only other lights I get are the three lights below my power button.. they all flash on/off when I release the power on button..that's it !


Hope this helps..I'll try your idea and will report back as soon as

denver372
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August 26, 2011 7:59:04 AM



A Linux Operating System can run as a LiveCD without a hard disk even being present - it runs in RAM only. That would tell you if there's anything wrong with the hardware. You can download one - my personal favourite for first timers is PCLinuxOS - from http://www.pclinuxos.com and burn it to a CD using ImgBurn or similar.


August 26, 2011 8:40:53 PM

Thanks for that saga lout..my son has laptop with Win7 can he burn a bootable cd if so how?....I'll try that first if that fails I'll try the Linux
August 30, 2011 5:44:31 AM



Sorry - I missed your reply.

If your son has a disk writer he canburn an ISO to make a disk bootable. I use ImgBurn - a free GNU utility you can download. Maybe the Microsoft Recovery Console could help you - download rc.iso http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/simple-utility-create-... and burn that - running Checkdisk could help you.



October 31, 2011 11:41:48 AM

denver372 said:
I have a Toshiba P20 laptop that is dead. I get 3LED's on, fans that work, but that's it. No hard drive noise nothing on the screen. I have tried to boot without the battery without the CD drive, I have taken out both memory chips ..still the same I don't get any beeps no sound at all other than the fans. I have stripped the laptop down to the MB looking for a cmos battery
no battery, I have looked for a jumper Cl1..not there...please can someone just help me with something that works I have been trying all kinds of things for a week now..still nothing...I know it's not doing the POST but don't know why or how to fix the problem...please help

denver372



Hi there

I also a toshiba p20 and i've experienced all types of problems with it!
First of all, quit trying to boot up with windows or linux - it's obviously NOT an OS problem
The fact that the notebook doesn't beep and doesn't show the "Toshiba" Logo when prompted, shows that the problem is before the OS booting.
So my first shot goes to a faulty RAM module... if you try to boot any laptop without RAM that's whats happens... Black screen, no beep. So try different combinations... try one module each time, on the two available slots. I had this problem once with a faulty 1 GB ram module.

The second shot is the worst case scenario... faulty MB! the power doesn't reach the RAM modules... if the Power reached the modules you'd be having a different error... When powered on... system beep and the "toshiba" logo appears and it jamms there! I also had that problem, wich was corrected by soldering a small piece that had cracked... it's near the power brick entrance, and down from the LCD cable connect in the MB.

Hope this helps out!
Good Luck
!